The Ethics Surrounding the Translation of Emotionally Charged Phrases

Expressions indicative of negative emotional attitudes of ancient authors are both difficult to detect and to translate. As for detection, since the author’s emotional attitudes are by nature optional appendages to the author’s thoughts and not an integral component of the author’s thinking, textual contexts mostly do not testify to their existence. As for translation, since emotionally charged phrases provoke emotional reactions from audiences, their expressions are often considered inappropriate within target languages, making translation challenging. In this presentation, I explore one example of this problem, the Hebrew construction kî mah. I demonstrate through semantic analysis that the construction means something akin to English “what the hell.” In English, such language would be considered inappropriate for bible translation. But in Japanese, the same construction may be translated by the word "ittai" without violating cultural norms. This case exemplifies the ethical-cultural dilemma which translators must wrestle with when translating negative emotional attitudes of biblical authors. Making decisions on whether to violate cultural norms in translating emotional attitudes would require an accurate evaluation of the benefits of violating cultural norms. Thus, in this presentation, I aim to begin exploring to what extent understanding emotional attitudes of the author benefits readers in gaining deeper understanding of texts, using the test case of contexts with the Hebrew construction kî mah.